The Wire

Real-time updates from ANZ tech sales

2 months ago
News

Canva cuts revenue forecast 30% to 20%, AI costs hit margins

## Canva cuts revenue forecast 30% to 20%, AI costs hit margins Canva dropped its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20% after AI inference costs blew out harder than expected. The Sydney-based design platform, valued at US$42 billion, slowed product rollout to fix unit economics before scaling broadly. Quarterly revenue still grew 25% to US$921.9 million. But co-founder Melanie Perkins told investors the company was "relying too heavily on frontier models" when it launched Canva AI 2.0 four months ago. Translation: they were paying OpenAI and similar providers per API call, and at 265 million monthly active users, that adds up fast. Canva has since cut the cost of a single AI task by nearly 90% by building first-party models and rebuilding architecture. That is the right move long term, but it meant pulling back distribution in the short term. The growth slowdown is the result. ### What this means for go-to-market Canva is shifting from selling features to monetising AI usage and credits. That changes enterprise packaging, customer acquisition economics, and likely how sales teams position the product. If you are selling into design or productivity buyers, watch how Canva prices AI: it will set the benchmark for what customers expect from SaaS tools with embedded GenAI. The broader pattern: SaaS companies are learning that adding AI without fixing unit economics first tanks margins. Atlassian just capped employee AI spending for the same reason. CFOs are now asking VPs of Sales to justify AI tool costs with actual ROI data, not vibes. Canva sits at about US$4 billion in ARR as of end of 2025, up from US$2.8 billion a year earlier. The company competes directly with Adobe and Figma while defending a freemium-led growth model. Co-founder and COO Cliff Obrecht said at Blackbird's Sunrise in April that building proprietary models was the plan all along to cut the AI bill. ### The takeaway If you are in sales leadership and your company is adding AI features: ask about unit economics before quota gets built around adoption metrics. Canva just showed what happens when inference costs outrun pricing strategy. They fixed it, but growth took the hit.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

Airtable sells for $2.25B at 2.7x ARR after $11.7B valuation

## The Numbers Bending Spoons is buying Airtable for $1.285B enterprise value, or about $2.25B equity value after net cash. That is 2.7x the company's $480M ARR as of June 2026. Airtable raised $1.4B total. Its peak valuation was $11.7B in late 2021 at 75x ARR. The current deal prices it 81% below that mark. The business: $480M ARR growing 20% YoY, 90% gross margins, cash flow positive since late 2024 generating $100M+ annually, 500,000+ organisations including 80% of the Fortune 100. ## What Changed Founded in 2012, Airtable built a relational database with a spreadsheet interface and sold it bottoms-up into enterprise. By 2021 it was doing $156M ARR and raised at a 75x multiple. Then growth slowed. Two rounds of layoffs totaling 491 people. The company cut to profitability, kept half its capital on the balance sheet, stabilised enterprise retention. In 2025-2026, founder-CEO Howie Liu declared a full AI refound: launched conversational app builder Omni, acquired DeepSky, hired OpenAI's former head of ChatGPT business products as CTO, shipped Superagent and Hyperagent. The result was 20% growth, not re-acceleration. ## Why It Sold No forcing function. No debt, $700M in the bank, profitable. But no path back to $11.7B either. At 20% growth you get priced as a cash flow asset, not a compounder. Filing an S-1 means going public well below the last private round, permanently. Secondary markets had been repricing Airtable for three years. The final price landed 44% below the January 2026 secondary mark and about 25% below where desks were pricing it three weeks ago. Competitive pressure matters too. The no-code app building position Airtable owned is being commoditised by faster, cheaper tools. ## The Hyperagent Carve-Out Pre-signing, Airtable transferred assets relating to Hyperagent, its autonomous AI worker platform announced February 2026, into a separate entity. The SEC filing confirms the reorganisation happened before the deal. Hyperagent was contributing roughly nothing to the $480M ARR, so the 2.7x multiple holds either way. But it tells you where Liu is going next and that the agent bet survived the sale. ## What It Means for Sales Bending Spoons is the Milan-based serial acquirer that IPO'd on Nasdaq in July 2026 and closed up 40% on day one. Its portfolio includes Evernote, Vimeo, Eventbrite, WeTransfer. Airtable is its first deal since listing. For sales professionals watching SaaS valuations in 2026: this is the clearing price for a well-known B2B brand doing half a billion in ARR at 20% growth with strong margins and profitability. The 2021 multiples are not coming back. The market pays for growth or profitability, rarely both at premium prices unless you are re-accelerating. Airtable's comp structure and sales org headcount are not publicly disclosed, but the scale suggests a meaningful enterprise motion alongside product-led growth. What happens to that team under new ownership is the next question.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

YC-backed startup offered job interviews for tattoos, founder apologizes

## The Stunt LemonLime, a Y Combinator-backed AI automation startup, hosted what founder Jordan Zietz called the "most unhinged" YC Startup School afterparty in San Francisco last week. The hook: get a tattoo, get an interview. Seven people took the deal. They are still in the interview process for AI and engineering roles. Zietz, a 24-year-old Stanford graduate, posted about it on LinkedIn (since deleted): "We brought an actual tattoo artist to our party and offered an instant interview to anyone who got a LemonLime tattoo. We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven't been done before." ## The Backlash The post got torn apart. "The job market cannot be this cooked that kids have to get permanent tattoos to get interviews," one user wrote. Another: "Imagine getting branded with the LemonLime logo for a job interview, then getting rejected." Zietz apologized days later: "What I thought would be a fun, memorable way to meet people was, in reality, reckless and instead came across as tying a permanent tattoo to a job opportunity, which showed poor judgement. I should have understood the pressure and power dynamic created by connecting tattoos to hiring." The company is covering tattoo removal costs for anyone with regrets. ## What This Actually Is This is a founder-stage recruiting stunt at a company with no disclosed headcount, no named sales leader, and no public revenue. LemonLime is early YC, not scaled venture. The fact that they are running tattoo parlours instead of structured hiring processes tells you where they are in the growth curve. For context: this is the same market where AI hiring tools are facing lawsuits over algorithmic bias (Workday settled a discrimination case last year), where recruitment scandals damage employer brands for years, and where experienced sales professionals are asking for comp transparency, not gimmicks. Worth noting: none of the seven people have been offered roles yet. They got tattoos for a shot at an interview at a startup most people had not heard of until this story broke. ## The Sales Angle If you are hiring sales talent in ANZ or anywhere else, this is a case study in what not to do. Desperation hiring signals scare off strong candidates. Power dynamics in recruiting are real. And viral stunts that make your company look unserious do not help when you are trying to close enterprise deals or attract experienced AEs. Real talk: if your recruiting strategy involves permanent body modification, your employer brand is not the problem. Your judgment is.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

Palantir hits $7.7B ARR, 93% growth, 157% NRR: Rule of 40 at 155%

# Palantir hits $7.7B ARR, 93% growth, 157% NRR: Rule of 40 at 155% Palantir just posted numbers that rewrite the rules on what growth looks like at scale. Q2 2026 revenue: $1.935 billion, up 93% year over year. That puts the run rate at $7.7 billion ARR. For context, this is the twelfth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth. A year ago, this was a $1 billion quarter. U.S. business is doing the heavy lifting. U.S. revenue grew 115% YoY and 23% sequentially to $1.573 billion, now over 81% of total revenue. U.S. commercial alone grew 149% YoY and 28% quarter over quarter. Net revenue retention hit 157%. That means existing customers expanded contracts by more than 50% on average. For enterprise SaaS benchmarks, anything above 120% is considered strong. Above 130% is elite. 157% is absurd. Rule of 40 scored 155%. That is growth rate (93%) plus operating margin (47% GAAP, 62% adjusted). Most public SaaS companies struggle to break 40%. Palantir is at 155%. The company raised full-year guidance from $7.65 billion to $8.15 billion. That is a $500 million raise, mid-year, at a business already doing nearly $8 billion ARR. ## What this means for enterprise sales teams These metrics are not just impressive, they are instructive. Palantir is showing what AI-driven land-and-expand looks like when it works at the highest level. NRR of 157% means the sales motion is not just closing new logos, it is expanding existing accounts faster than most companies can grow top-line revenue. For enterprise AEs and sales leaders, Palantir is proof that growth does not have to decay at scale if the product drives enough value and the expansion motion is embedded in the go-to-market model. Palantir also has meaningful ANZ presence through government and enterprise deployments, though the company does not break out regional headcount publicly. Its recent $10 billion U.S. Army contract underscores its dominance in defense software, and that same approach is playing out in commercial enterprise, where it competes with Snowflake, Databricks, and C3.ai for AI and data transformation budgets. CEO Alex Karp called the quarter "otherworldly." CRO Ryan Taylor said the results were "unprecedented, but entirely unsurprising." Twelve straight quarters of acceleration. $7.7 billion ARR. 157% NRR. Rule of 40 at 155%. These are the numbers sales teams reference when they talk about best-in-class expansion. Palantir is not just scaling. It is redefining what scaling looks like.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Unlockd cofounder ends 8-year Google fight, startup killed 2018

Matt Berriman has ended his eight-year legal fight against Google over the death of Unlockd, the Australian adtech startup that went from $200 million valuation to voluntary administration in 2018. The Ninth Circuit Federal Appeals Court rejected Unlockd's latest attempt to overturn a 2025 decision favouring Google. Berriman, cofounder and former CEO, confirmed the news on LinkedIn this week. Unlockd raised over $60 million, backed by Lachlan Murdoch and the Catch of the Day founders. The company served ads on Android lock screens in exchange for user rewards: credits, loyalty points, discounts. It had 330,000 monthly active users and was preparing for an ASX listing when Google banned it from the Play Store in early 2018. Google cited policy violations. Later it emerged Google had invested in Glance, an Indian company with a similar lock-screen ad model. Unlockd secured interim injunctions in the UK and Australia to stay on the Play Store temporarily, but the damage was done. By June 2018, Unlockd entered voluntary administration. Berriman filed the US case in California in 2021 after details of Google's Glance investment surfaced. The case was dismissed in 2023, survived through appeals and amended filings, and now ends with the Ninth Circuit rejection. ## Why this matters for ANZ sales teams Unlockd is a case study in platform risk. If you are selling B2C software that lives inside Google, Apple, or Meta ecosystems, you are one policy change away from losing your book of business overnight. Enterprise AEs, ask your prospects about platform dependency. If their revenue relies on Google Play or App Store distribution, price in the risk. For adtech sellers in ANZ, Unlockd is a cautionary tale your prospects already know. It killed an Australian startup with real traction and real funding. Use it to frame platform diversification conversations. The broader context: Google faces multiple antitrust cases globally, including a major US ruling in 2024 on search monopoly practices. Unlockd's legal theory, that Google killed a competitor, aligns with regulatory scrutiny now hitting big tech. But regulatory action moves slowly. Unlockd moved into administration six years before US regulators delivered their first major antitrust win against Google. Berriman has moved on to VC investing and mental health advocacy. Unlockd remains defunct. Google remains.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

Canva now second biggest AI platform globally, behind ChatGPT

Canva pulled 10.5 billion website visits between May 2025 and April 2026, making it the world's second most-visited AI platform behind ChatGPT, according to new data from OneLittleWeb. That puts the Sydney-founded company ahead of Google Gemini (6.9 billion visits), DeepSeek (3.8 billion), Anthropic's Claude (3.4 billion), Grok (2.5 billion), and Perplexity (2.3 billion). ChatGPT still leads by a wide margin at 64.7 billion visits, more than six times Canva's traffic. ## What this means for sales teams Canva's number two position reflects a different competitive strategy: AI embedded in existing workflows rather than a standalone chatbot fighting for daily active users. Sales and marketing teams already use Canva for pitch decks, one-pagers, and social content. The AI layer speeds up template customisation and asset generation without changing the underlying use case. That workflow integration matters for AI tool adoption in sales orgs. Tools that sit inside existing processes (CRM prompts, email assistants, proposal generators) see higher daily usage than standalone platforms requiring separate logins and context switching. Canva now operates at roughly US$4 billion in annual revenue with 265 million monthly users across 190 countries. The company is Sydney-headquartered and remains one of ANZ's best-capitalised tech companies, backed by Sequoia, Blackbird, and Fidelity. Recent market commentary pegs its valuation around US$100 billion tied to IPO preparation and AI product expansion. ## The AI platform landscape The OneLittleWeb analysis tracked 9,531 AI tools across 170+ categories. The data shows market concentration: ChatGPT and Canva together account for the majority of AI platform traffic, with established players like Gemini and Claude competing for the remainder. For sales leaders evaluating AI tool stacks, the usage data suggests two adoption paths: general-purpose chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) for research and writing, and workflow-specific AI (Canva for design, Gong for call analysis) embedded in existing sales processes. Teams report higher sustained usage with the latter. Canva's Chief Product Officer Cameron Adams has not commented publicly on the ranking. Sales team size is not disclosed, but the company's enterprise and SMB penetration across 190 countries indicates a substantial global go-to-market operation.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

Small business costs up 25%: insurance, wages, interest hit sales team budgets

## The Numbers Australian small business costs jumped 24.6% from March 2020 to March 2026, according to AMP Bank Go's inaugural Small Business Cost Pressure Index. By year-end, that figure hits 27.1%. The breakdown: - Insurance: +51.7% - Interest payments: +36.3% - Wages: +20.3% Wages made up half the index weighting. Small businesses are labour-heavy, and this margin squeeze is real. ## What This Means for Sales Teams If you are selling into SMB, your buyers just got a lot more careful. Operating costs are up across 2.7 million Australian small businesses. That means: **Longer sales cycles.** When insurance premiums double and interest payments climb 36%, discretionary spending gets scrutinised. Expect more stakeholders, more questions about ROI, more requests for proof of value. **Tighter budgets.** The businesses you are prospecting into have thinner margins than they did four years ago. "Nice to have" is now "show me the payback period." **Comp pressure.** If your territory is weighted toward SMB, quota relief conversations are worth having. When your customer base is under this much cost pressure, close rates shift. Historical attainment data from 2022 may not reflect 2026 reality. ## The Broader Context This tracks with what we have been hearing across ANZ sales: business confidence is down, hiring is cautious, and deal velocity has slowed. Small business insurance costs now range from $600 to $2,000 annually for basic cover, more for staffed operations. AMP Bank Go director John Arnott put it plainly: "Small businesses are finding it really tough to contain these price increases given their razor-thin profit margins." For enterprise and mid-market AEs, this is background noise. For SMB-focused teams, it is the story of your quarter. Worth noting: if your comp plan assumes 2023 close rates in a 2026 cost environment, that is a conversation to have with your manager before Q3 planning.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

Skalata Ventures management buyout: Workman and Lee acquire Paul Little's VC fund

## Management buys Skalata from founding backer Rohan Workman (CEO) and Maxine Lee (COO) acquired Skalata Ventures from billionaire cofounder Paul Little. Little launched the Melbourne seed fund with Workman in 2019, backed by LaunchVic's $3 million and RBA board member Carol Schwartz. He stays on as director during transition. Former Future Fund CFO Paul Mann joins as board chair. Skalata runs three funds with 85 portfolio companies. Early cheques range $50k to $300k, with follow-on support to $1 million. Latest fund size: $50 million. Investors include Victorian and WA state governments, four universities, Afterpay cofounder Anthony Eisen, and TechnologyOne founder Adrian Di Marco. ## Why this matters for sales teams VC ownership changes can signal portfolio shifts. Management buyouts in venture capital differ from traditional leveraged buyouts: the acquiring team (Workman and Lee) buys equity from the founding investor (Little) rather than using debt to acquire an operating company. This structure keeps fund operations stable while transferring control. For sales professionals at portfolio companies, founder exits rarely change day-to-day support. The investment team (Workman, Lee, Investment Director Shahirah Gardner, Investment Manager Rob Greco) stays intact. Portfolio companies like H3D (raised $5.8 million Series A) and Restoke ($5.1 million seed) continue operating under existing fund terms. ## Portfolio performance Skalata's most recent exit: Canva acquired outdoor adtech startup Doohly for $30 million in March. The fund backs Australian pre-seed and seed startups across SaaS, adtech, foodtech, and healthtech. Sector-agnostic but concentrated in Melbourne and Sydney-headquartered tech businesses. Investment pace and cheque sizes unlikely to change. Workman and Lee have run operations since launch. Little's exit after seven years follows a standard VC exit strategy: transfer ownership to the operating team once the fund reaches scale. Most venture capital fund exits happen through distributions to LPs over 10+ years, but GP-level exits like this consolidate control without changing fund structure. For startups considering Skalata: same team, same model, same support infrastructure. The ownership change is internal mechanics, not a strategic pivot.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

SaaStr cuts team from 20 to 3, adds AI SDRs, revenue swings to +47%

## The Numbers SaaStr, Jason Lemkin's bootstrapped B2B SaaS media company, went from 20+ humans to 3 humans plus 20+ AI agents. Revenue moved from -19% YoY to +47% YoY. The AI agents generated $3.7M+ in revenue. One AI SDR booked a six-figure sponsorship meeting at 6:02 PM on a Saturday. A $70k deal closed with zero human involvement. In one month, 71% of closed-won sponsorship deals came from AI-qualified leads. Historic average from inbound: 29-34%. Volume comparison: their AI SDR sends 3,221 emails monthly from a single platform. Human SDRs sent 75-285 emails per rep monthly. That is 11-40x increase in volume. Response rates stayed the same: 5-12% depending on lead warmth. The math: human SDR sends 285 emails monthly, 10% response rate on warm leads equals 28 responses. AI SDR sends 3,221 emails monthly, 10-12% response rate equals 320-385 responses. That is 11-13x more pipeline from the same lead pools. ## What This Means for Implementation Lemkin's framing: AI SDRs are multipliers, not creators. If your best rep runs a playbook that closes 10 deals monthly, an AI agent runs that same playbook at 100x scale. Same sequences, same targeting, same objection handling, same messaging. Just more of it, faster, around the clock. If your team has not figured out what works yet, 10x times zero is still zero. You just burn through TAM faster and annoy more prospects in less time. The tools work: Agentforce, Artisan, Qualified, Monaco. A well-trained AI SDR can outperform most human SDRs. But the AI does not figure out your ICP, messaging, qualification rules, or testing methodology. That is still your job. SaaStr's guidance: copy your best human rep's patterns. Run AI-versus-human parallel testing before relying on the agent. ## Market Context AI SDRs handle top-of-funnel work: prospecting, outreach, qualification, meeting booking. They operate across email, chat, voice, and LinkedIn. The deployment conversation has shifted from "do they work" to "how do you implement without burning your list." The question is not whether AI SDRs outperform humans on volume. The question is whether you have a playbook worth multiplying.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Multi-year SaaS commissions: pay on cash upfront, not future years

## The Early-Stage Model: Pay on Cash Received At EchoSign, Jason Lemkin paid full commission on all cash collected upfront for multi-year deals. A three-year prepaid contract worth $400k triggered the same commission payout as if it were a single-year deal at that value. Year 2 and Year 3 did not count toward quota because they did not impact current-year ARR. But reps got paid on the cash that hit the bank. The logic: when you are pre-$10m ARR, cash flow matters more than future revenue recognition. A $400k prepaid deal is worth more than a $150k annual contract you have to renew twice. You push churn risk out to Year 4 and fund operations now. Lemkin notes this approach is uncommon. Fewer than 10% of startups pay full commission on prepaid multi-year contracts, according to separate SaaS comp research. ## Post-$10m: Scale Back Multi-Year Payouts After crossing $10m ARR, EchoSign changed the model. Years 2 and 3 of prepaid deals earned 25% commission, not 100%. The reason: when renewal rates are high and cash is less constrained, you risk incentivising excessive discounting. Customers prepay multiple years for one reason: a bigger discount. If your renewals already sit above 95%, you are trading future margin for short-term cash you may not need. ## What Happens Without Guardrails After the Adobe acquisition, EchoSign's new rev ops team removed two controls: they paid 100% commission on multi-year deals without requiring cash upfront, and they loosened discounting limits. One rep closed a lifetime enterprise deal for $200k. The customer paid once and used the product for a decade. The rep made over $150k annually for 10+ years on a single booking. Lemkin's takeaway: incentives drive behaviour. If your comp plan rewards long-term contracts without cash collection or discount caps, expect creative deals that hurt the business. ## The ANZ Angle This model assumes strong renewal rates and enterprise customers willing to prepay. In ANZ SaaS, where deal cycles can be longer and annual contracts are still the norm for mid-market, the threshold for when to scale back multi-year payouts may differ. Worth testing: do your customers prepay for meaningful discounts, or are they still on annual terms regardless of pricing? The principle holds: align commission structure with what the business needs most. Early on, that is cash. Later, it is sustainable growth without margin erosion.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Procore hits $1.5B ARR, pays 11x revenue for DroneDeploy

## The Numbers Procore reported Q2 FY26 revenue of $375M, up 16% year over year, beating guidance of $364M to $366M. The construction management software company hit $1.5B in ARR and posted its first GAAP operating profit: $4.3M, up from a $30.3M loss a year ago. Non-GAAP operating margin reached 21%, up 800 basis points. Free cash flow was $65M, up 507%. Net revenue retention sits at 106%, with gross retention at 95%. The company added 2,871 customers paying $100k+ ARR, up 14%, now representing 68% of total ARR. Worth noting: Procore trades at roughly 4.3x ARR, or about $6.5B enterprise value. ## The $845M Bet Procore is paying $845M in cash for DroneDeploy, a reality-capture and robotics company with roughly $78M in trailing revenue. That is about 10.8x revenue, more than double what the market pays for Procore itself. The company is taking on real leverage for the first time, arranging a committed bridge facility to fund most of the purchase while evaluating permanent capital structure. They are being explicit: this is about being "EPS-accretive." The strategic play is AI. DroneDeploy provides what Procore calls "visual intelligence," bridging physical jobsites to digital records. Combined with Datagrid, acquired for $159M in January, the goal is "digital coworkers" that offset labour shortages. Two acquisitions in six months for roughly $1B combined. ## The Expense Discipline Total GAAP operating expenses grew 3% while revenue grew 16%. Procore added $51M of quarterly revenue on $9M of incremental opex. Sales and marketing was $145.8M, up 2.7%, and actually declined sequentially from $149.2M in Q1. GAAP S&M went from 44% of revenue to 39%. R&D was $93.3M, up 5%, but non-GAAP R&D fell from 20% of revenue to 18%. ## What Changed Procore is six months into a full leadership swap. Ajei Gopal took over as CEO in November 2025 from founder Tooey Courtemanche, who remains Chairman. CFO Rachel Pyles and CRO Walt Hearn both came from Ansys, where Gopal was CEO before its $35B sale to Synopsys. The prior 24 months saw growth slow. This quarter suggests the new team is re-accelerating while holding the line on costs. The question for sales teams: whether the AI investments translate to an easier enterprise sell or just higher quotas on the same motion.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Google fined $1.4bn under EU Digital Markets Act for Play, Search self-dealing

Google has been fined €890 million ($1.4 billion) by the European Commission for breaking the Digital Markets Act, marking the first DMA penalty against Alphabet's core search and app distribution business. The Commission says Google favored its own shopping, travel, and local services in search results while blocking app developers from directing users to better deals outside the Play Store. Both moves squeeze Google's commercial partners: publishers lose traffic, developers lose margin. For sales teams selling into or through Google's ecosystem, this matters. The EU ordered behavior changes with a compliance window, which means commercial terms are shifting for anyone who depends on Google for app discovery, search traffic, or platform monetization. If you are an AE at a SaaS shop that relies on Play distribution or a publisher chasing organic search, your partnership terms may change in the next 12 months. Google's President of Global Affairs Kent Walker called the ruling "product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants," saying the DMA forces Google to "strip away real-time search features Europeans love" and "dismantle safety protections on Google Play." Brussels is not backing down. The EU labels Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, ByteDance, and Samsung as "gatekeepers" that control consumer access. This is Google's second major EU antitrust loss: it recently lost an appeal of a $4.5 billion fine over Android anti-competitive practices. Worth noting: President Trump has threatened retaliation against EU tech regulations, calling them unfair to US companies. Whether that pressure affects enforcement timelines or penalties is unknown, but the Commission is moving forward regardless. **What this means for ANZ sales teams:** If your go-to-market depends on Google's ad platform, app store, or search traffic, track the compliance timeline. Enterprise AEs selling into publishers or app developers should expect questions about how DMA changes affect partnership economics. Google's ANZ footprint is significant, so local implications may follow.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

Adobe Marketo down 1.5 days, broken unsubscribe, wants 20% price increase

## The Numbers **Cost:** $60,000 per year for Adobe Marketo **Impact:** One missed newsletter send to 450,000+ subscribers, 1.5 days of downtime, broken unsubscribe link for two weeks **Response:** Adobe proposed a 20% price increase at renewal Jason Lemkin runs SaaStr with 3 humans and 20+ AI agents. When Marketo broke, his team could not fix it because the platform is not built for agent-driven operations. ## What Broke Marketo went down for a day and a half. Not degraded, down. SaaStr missed a Tuesday newsletter send to 450,000 subscribers. The unsubscribe link was broken for two weeks, which is a CAN-SPAM compliance issue on the most basic function an email platform exists to provide. Adobe's engineering team blamed Salesforce, then blamed SaaStr, then committed to nothing. The renewal conversation started with a 20% price increase. ## Why It Matters for Sales Teams Lemkin's broader point: legacy B2B vendors are not being displaced by AI products. They are losing customers because the product and support quality no longer justify the price. SaaStr spends $10,000 per year on Salesforce and a similar amount on Marketo for community operations. The complaint is not about enterprise-scale spend. It is about the disconnect between legacy SaaS pricing and the quality of service customers now expect. For sales teams selling against legacy vendors, this is the opening. Customers are frustrated with vendors that ship broken features, ignore support tickets, and raise prices while quality declines. ## The Agent Problem SaaStr runs on AI agents. When Marketo broke, the question was not whether a human could fix it. The question was whether an agent could. The answer was no. Marketo has no real webhooks, single-digit bulk exports per day, 90-day log retention, auth that breaks on whitespace, and no agent toolkit. A full sync of SaaStr's own data takes days because of rate caps. Legacy SaaS platforms built for humans clicking through dashboards are not built for agent-driven operations. That is the gap where new vendors are winning deals. ## What This Means If you are selling into accounts running legacy martech, CRM, or workflow platforms, ask about uptime, support response times, and API quality. Customers are ready to move. The objection is not price, it is switching cost. If you are selling for a legacy vendor, expect renewals to get harder. Customers are comparing your support quality and uptime to newer platforms that are agent-ready and priced 60% lower. The SaaS market is not collapsing because of AI competition. It is collapsing because vendors stopped shipping quality and started harvesting customers.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Chief AI Officer hiring surges 340% in ANZ, OTE hits $500k

## Chief AI Officer hiring surges 340% in ANZ, OTE hits $500k More than two in five Australian companies have appointed a Chief AI Officer, and that figure is expected to hit nearly two-thirds by 2027, according to Datacom research covering 500-plus medium to large enterprises. Chief AI Officer listings jumped 340% between Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, with another 200-plus positions expected to fill in 2026. Enterprise CAIO packages in Australia run $350,000 to $500,000-plus, with head-of-AI roles typically priced at $230,000 to $350,000. Financial services is the clearest early adopter. All big four banks now have a Chief AI Officer or equivalent: Westpac appointed a Chief Data, Digital and AI Officer, Commonwealth Bank appointed a Chief AI Officer, ANZ named a Chief Data and AI Officer, and NAB appointed its own Chief AI Officer in March 2026. The federal public service has required agencies to appoint a senior Chief AI Officer by 30 June 2026, which has helped normalise the role across Australia. ### What this means for sales teams Companies are not just hiring a single AI lead. They are building adjacent teams around data, governance, architecture and AI product roles. Recent moves at ANZ and the big four indicate the role is increasingly a C-suite or near-C-suite mandate with direct reporting lines and enterprise scope. That means vendors selling AI platforms, governance tools, data infrastructure and implementation services are likely to find buying power concentrated in these offices. The split between strategy and execution matters. While three in five companies say AI is a top strategic priority, only two in five actually have an AI strategy. Lou Compagnone, Datacom AI director, told AAP: "Rather than having that whole 'we're just going to sprinkle AI on top of what we already do', there needs to be analysis of what it means for your company." Improving productivity is the largest driver of AI adoption, with 38% of respondents identifying it as their biggest motivation. As August earnings season looms, investors will be looking for signs that the technology is delivering returns, not just headcount.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

Eight ANZ startups raised $102 million in two weeks, Partly leads at $71.5m

## The Numbers Eight ANZ startups raised a combined $102 million over the past fortnight. The largest: Partly, a Christchurch automotive software startup, closed $71.5 million (US$50 million) from DST Global and Blackbird at a $715 million (US$500 million) valuation. The rest of the capital went to seven other companies across space logistics, agtech, and B2B software. Collectively, the raises signal investors are backing expansion-stage companies with clear paths to offshore revenue, not just domestic plays. ## What Partly Does Partly builds software for automotive parts suppliers and repair shops. The company has offices in the US and UK and is building an Australian team. According to The Australian, Partly is avoiding major Australian expansion over tax concerns, despite the proximity to its NZ headquarters. The Series B values the company at 10x its previous round, suggesting strong revenue growth or expansion metrics that justified the markup. ## The Other Seven The fortnight's other raises included: - **Outlier Space**: Space logistics and satellite servicing - **Navi**: Navigation and route optimization software - **Agscent**: Agricultural technology - **Superstat**: Sports analytics platform - **Wellumio**: Health and wellness tech - **Early Bird**: Consumer product (details limited) - **Octopusbot**: Automation software Most are B2B plays. Most are raising to scale internationally. That pattern mirrors other recent ANZ rounds: Neara raised $45 million for a Series C to expand offshore, Alimetry raised US$18 million for US commercialization. ## What This Means for Sales Teams Series B and growth-stage rounds typically mean headcount expansion. Partly's $71.5 million will likely fund US market entry, which translates to AE and AM hires in North America. The company already has a UK presence, suggesting they have proven the offshore playbook. For sales professionals tracking ANZ opportunities, the pattern is clear: capital is flowing to companies with validated international demand, not just local traction. If you are evaluating a startup, ask where the growth capital is going. If the answer is "US expansion," expect quota tied to new market penetration, longer sales cycles, and ramp periods that account for market education. ## Context This fortnight follows other strong ANZ funding activity in Q3 2026. The market is rewarding startups with defensible IP, clear commercialization paths, and proven ability to sell outside ANZ. Biotech, infrastructure software, and regulated sectors continue to attract capital. For comparison, earlier July saw retail media startup Zitcha close a $15 million Series A for US growth, and wastewater treatment and local government software also landed funding. The common thread: investors want to see offshore revenue potential before writing large checks. ## The Takeaway ANZ startups are raising to scale globally, not just survive locally. If you are evaluating a role at a recently funded company, ask where the capital is allocated. US expansion means new territories, new comp structures, and often new leadership. Make sure the OTE assumes realistic attainment in a new market, not the close rates they had selling to existing ANZ customers.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

CSIRO seeks private funding as R&D investment lags 5% GDP target

CSIRO is asking wealthy donors and businesses for money. That is the headline from CEO Doug Hilton's National Press Club address this week, where he flagged philanthropy as a path forward after job cuts and a infrastructure backlog that left 80% of the agency's 800 buildings unfit for purpose. The context: Australia invests about 1.6% of GDP in research. Comparable nations invest 5%. CSIRO's own books show 75% of 2023/24 revenue came from federal and state governments. Private Australian industry contributed 4.4%. Overseas companies and governments added 5.6%. The gap is real. Hilton pointed to medical research as the model, saying that sector is "expert" at tapping philanthropy. CSIRO is now having those conversations across other science areas. The agency has narrowed focus after cuts, choosing to abandon some research rather than spread resources too thin. Almost a quarter of remaining job losses came from environmental research, including climate adaptation science. For the ANZ deep-tech ecosystem, the signal is that even the national science agency is hunting for private capital. CSIRO's commercial vehicle, Main Sequence, has $1 billion in funds under management and has invested in 51 companies since 2017. But the core agency still runs on public funding, and that model is under pressure. CSIRO has run matched-funding programs for SMEs and startups: Kick-Start offered $10,000 to $50,000, and SME Connect backed 750 SMEs with $20 million. The original CSIRO Innovation Fund split $200 million between $70 million government, $30 million CSIRO, and $100 million private capital. Those programs are the bridge between research and commercialisation. Hilton framed the private funding push as a way to "laser focus" extra capital on impact. The sales angle here is indirect: if CSIRO scales back foundational research, fewer deep-tech companies get incubated. That means fewer enterprise sales opportunities in climate tech, biotech, and industrial innovation. The pipeline starts at the research stage, and right now, that pipeline is underfunded.

Startup Daily
2 months ago
News

SaaStr ditches Marketo after AI agents hit API limits, migrates in one week

## The churn signal came from an agent, not a human SaaStr moved 10+ years of marketing data off Marketo after their AI agents kept hitting API rate limits. Not a strategic review. Not a procurement committee. An agent errored out, they asked it what to do, and it told them to leave. Jason Lemkin runs SaaStr (the SaaS media and events business) with 3 humans and 20+ AI agents. The agents were querying Marketo's API constantly for analytics and workflow automation. Marketo's limits allowed roughly an hour of usable API time per day, then stalled. When you are running agent-driven ops, that is not a minor inconvenience. That is a blocker. Lemkin asked the agent what they should do about it. The agent gave three alternative platforms with better API limits. All more agent-friendly. Hard to argue with. ## What Marketo could have done Marketo was their most expensive vendor. Five straight years of price increases. Another 12% on the renewal. Support was the worst of any vendor they work with, according to Lemkin. He says they would have stayed at $20k with higher API limits. Marketo had multiple chances to name $25k and keep the account. Nobody did. Instead, they pushed for another increase on a product the agent had already flagged as the constraint. The migration took one week. Cost $14 in agent time. Lemkin says he would not have voted for it without the agent recommendation. ## Why this matters for sales tools API quality used to be a solutions engineer problem during evaluation, then forgotten. Now it is a churn surface. When agents are your primary interface to a product, query volume goes up by an order of magnitude. A budget built for nightly syncs does not work when an agent is asking 30 questions a day instead of 3 per quarter. The agent has no relationship with your CSM. No memory of the deal you cut three years ago. No political reason to protect the incumbent. It surfaces the failure, gets asked for alternatives, and gives a clean answer. Switching costs are collapsing when agents do the migration work. Relationship equity does not apply to something with no relationships. Support quality and API reliability are now retention levers, not nice-to-haves. Lemkin's take: if your product delivers half its value once the agent is doing the work, you may need to let customers renew at half the price. Charging pre-agentic prices for post-agentic value is how you lose accounts to an agent's recommendation instead of a human's. ## The comp angle SaaStr previously had a traditional sales team. Lemkin has publicly said he replaced most of them with AI agents and stopped hiring humans for sales roles. That is 20+ agents doing work that used to require headcount with OTEs. For sales professionals: this is not a vendor case study. This is what happens when your buyer's ops team runs on agents instead of people, and those agents start making vendor decisions based on API performance, not relationship history.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

SaaStr AI 2026: Anthropic closes 54% of enterprise self-serve, Gamma hits $100M with no sales team

## The playbook is changing faster than the comp plans The sales and GTM sessions at SaaStr AI 2026 were not about whether to deploy agents in the revenue org. That debate is over. The speakers had already shipped, and they brought the numbers: what broke, what worked, and what they would do differently next time. Eleanor Dorfman, Head of Industries at Anthropic, walked through what happened when a new Claude release sent enterprise demand vertical. The obvious move was to hire reps three to five times faster. Anthropic went the other direction and rebuilt the enterprise motion around AI instead. Four months later, 54% of new enterprise logos were closing through self-serve. Real enterprise accounts, real ACV, real contract terms, with no rep gating the front door. The reps who used to run those deals got pointed at accounts where a human actually changes the outcome. ## The $100M no-sales case study Gamma is the single best argument in B2B for skipping a sales team. Grant Lee, co-founder and CEO, stood on stage and told founders not to skip it. Gamma hit $100M ARR with roughly 50 people, profitably, driven by word of mouth rather than a sales org. 50 million users, 600,000 paying subscribers. His biggest regret was waiting too long to add sales. Even a world-class inbound motion leaves enterprise deals, expansion revenue, and larger accounts sitting on the table. If the company with the strongest excuse to wait wishes it had moved sooner, most founders riding inbound are later than they think. ## Rep economics are resetting Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner.com, put up the most concrete rep economics of the event. Owner is approaching $100M ARR selling roughly $10K ACV software to independent restaurants. The numbers on his AI-native team: $2M+ in ARR per rep per year, as the average, not the top performer. That is 20x close-won to OTE, meaning a $150K rep is bringing in multiples of their comp. Outbound BDRs are closing $100K+ per month in revenue, not pipeline. That is 4x the ARR per rep of their direct SMB competitors. The takeaway for every revenue leader is a reset on what good looks like. If your reps are running at 3x or 4x their comp and you think that is healthy, the ceiling just moved. AI-augmented reps at a well-run org are producing at a level that makes the old benchmarks look outdated. ## Agents on the leads no human was going to call The PayPal and Salesforce session delivered the cleanest ROI story of the week. PayPal put Agentforce on roughly 8,000 leads a month that no human was going to touch. These were not the good leads. These were the accounts sitting at the bottom of the funnel with no rep assigned. The agent converted them at a rate that justified the spend, and it did it without adding headcount. Vercel took a 10-person lead qualification function down to one person with a lead agent. Replit showed data that rep-level AI usage predicts quota attainment. Stripe's Maia Josebachvili walked through the four patterns behind the fastest-growing AI companies on the platform. Sam Blond, co-founder and CEO of Monaco, put the comp question on the table: when agents deliver the outcome, how do you pay the team? The session did not land on a single answer, which tells you how early we still are. What is clear is that the old ratio of reps to revenue is breaking, and the new one is still being written. ## What this means for ANZ sales teams None of the companies on stage have confirmed ANZ headcount or local offices in the provided research, but the GTM models they are proving out will hit here. Enterprise self-serve motions, leaner revenue orgs, and agent-augmented SDR and AE roles are not US-only trends. If Anthropic, Gamma, or Owner.com do open ANZ offices, the roles they hire for will look different from the traditional scale-up playbook. Worth watching LinkedIn for enterprise sales, partnerships, or solutions engineering roles in-region, because that would signal a push into Australia and New Zealand rather than purely US-centric expansion. For ANZ sales professionals, the question is not whether AI will change the motion. It already has. The question is whether your current role is structured to benefit from it, or whether you are sitting in a function that is about to get re-architected.

SaaStr
2 months ago
News

Blue-collar roles see 20% pay rises while sales comp stays flat

## Blue-collar roles see 20% pay rises while sales comp stays flat The biggest pay rises in Australia are not going to sales leaders or enterprise AEs. They are going to stevedores, underground mining supervisors and field service technicians. New ATO taxation statistics for 2023-24 show annual salary growth of 15-20% in blue-collar and technical roles, while corporate positions including sales stayed relatively flat. SEEK labour market data backs this up: the strongest wage growth is concentrated in mining, construction, energy, infrastructure and manufacturing. Specific winners include stevedores, field service technicians, draftspersons, mining drafters, jumbo operators and underground supervisors. Healthcare and social assistance roles saw 5.5% growth according to ABS data. Retail, admin and most office-based roles saw minimal movement. ### What this means for sales teams If you are selling into resources, logistics, trades, healthcare or technical services, your buyers are competing aggressively for talent and have budget to spend. These sectors are expanding headcount and paying premiums to retain operational staff. If you are in corporate sales and wondering why your OTE has not moved much while living costs jumped 7.8% in late 2022, the data confirms what you already knew: the money is going elsewhere. For context, this follows a period where inflation hit 7.8% in December 2022 before the RBA wrestled it back down. Workers in shortage sectors got real raises. Most corporate roles got cost-of-living adjustments at best. ### The comp reality Robert Half, Robert Walters and Michael Page salary guides have all documented similar patterns: technical and operational roles in high-demand sectors are seeing the strongest movement. Sales roles, particularly in tech and professional services, have seen modest increases that often lag inflation. For SDRs and AEs evaluating offers: if the company sells into mining, construction or logistics, ask about their growth targets and pipeline. If they are in a hot sector, the budget is there. If they are selling to office workers in saturated markets, expect tighter comp and longer sales cycles. Bottom line: the cost-of-living crisis is not hitting everyone equally. Some jobs are doing fine. Most sales roles are not among them.

SmartCompany
2 months ago
News

Sendle brand bought from liquidation, relaunching September under McKenna

# Sendle brand bought from liquidation, relaunching September under McKenna Andrew McKenna, who runs McKenna Worldwide Services and Quantium Solutions Australia, has bought the Sendle brand out of liquidation. The acquisition covers trademarks, IP, and the domain, but excludes Sendle Pty Ltd and its debts. The relaunch was announced at Sydney's Online Retailer Conference with a target go-live of September 2026. Deal value was not disclosed. Sendle collapsed in January after a three-way merger with US logistics firms FirstMile and ACI Logistix fell apart. The Sydney-founded startup had raised over $100 million positioning itself as a tech-enabled, carbon-neutral alternative to Australia Post for SMB parcel delivery. When major investor Federation Asset Management questioned ACI Logistix's finances, Sendle abruptly ceased operations, leaving small-business customers scrambling. The brand is now part of McKenna Worldwide Pty Ltd. McKenna said customer and supplier response "has been extraordinary," signaling demand for affordable small-business shipping. ## What this means for sales professionals No confirmed sales hiring yet. The original Sendle team is gone, the FAST Group merger entity dissolved, and McKenna's acquisition is a brand-led restart, not a continuation of the old business. Historically, Sendle competed as a middleman between SMBs and delivery networks like Aramex and Couriers Please. The relaunch appears to preserve that model under McKenna-linked logistics infrastructure, but current headcount, revenue, and go-to-market structure are unclear. Worth noting: this is a post-liquidation acquisition, not a turnaround. If McKenna is rebuilding a sales team, expect green-field hiring with no legacy comp structure or book of business. Role details, OTE, and territory structure have not been announced. For now, this is a brand comeback story. Sales job announcements, if they happen, will tell us whether this is a serious relaunch or a domain parking exercise.

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